Page:Gesta Romanorum - Swan - Wright - 1.djvu/166

cxl at a thousand florins. [See Tale XXIII. Vol. 2.] Considering the result, they were cheaply purchased; although, in these days, when advice is much oftener given than paid for—even with thanks, the price may be deemed somewhat of the highest.

The many stories on the subject of adultery, seem to indicate a bad moral state of society at the time they were written; and it is to be feared that the lawless feeling which chivalry in its decline exhibited, affords an unhappy confirmation. Whether the fact of the monks levelling much of their satire against the fair sex is also corroborative; or whether it proceed from that impotence of mind, which being itself fretted by circumstance, would gladly efface or deteriorate whatever is the object of its unavailing wishes, I do not take upon me to decide.

It is necessary that I should advertise the